League's Polynesian powerplay muscles in on indigenous numbers

THE number of Aboriginal players in the NRL has halved since the
early 1990s, with coaches keener to recruit Polynesian-type body
shapes to combat the brutal collisions of the code.

The percentage of indigenous players in the premiership has
fallen from 21 per cent in the 1990s to 11 per cent today,
according to NSWRL indigenous programs officer Steve Hall.

"The coaches are going for the bigger, stronger Polynesian
players, rather than the quicker, more agile players," said Hall, a
development officer with the NSWRL for 20 years. "Polynesian
players now represent 29 per cent of the NRL but unfortunately our
percentage of Aboriginal players has dropped."

Rugby league's Aboriginal Team of the Century is a galaxy of
past and present stars, including Lionel Morgan, the first
indigenous Kangaroo, Arthur Beetson, who was also chosen in the
code's Team of the Century, and current players Greg Inglis and
Johnathan Thurston.

While the actual number of Aboriginal players has not declined
significantly, the huge influx of Polynesian players recently has
lowered the ratio of indigenous players. The proportion of
Aboriginal players in the Toyota Cup, the NRL's elite under-20s
competition, is 12 per cent.

The NRL's education and welfare chief officer, Matt Francis,
said: "The so-called 'browning of the game' with the burgeoning
numbers of Polynesian players has got to have an impact on the
percentage of Aboriginal players in the NRL and Toyota Cup. But 40
per cent of Australia's team at the recent World Cup was Aboriginal
and six of the 17 players chosen in the Toyota Cup Team of the Year
were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island players.

"When you consider soccer has set a 10-year goal to reach an
indigenous target of 5 per cent, I challenge any code, other than
AFL, which also has 11 per cent, to have those numbers."

While Francis said the heritage figures of NRL players were
accurate, he described statistics on the ethnic background of
junior representative players as "rubbery".

Rugby league only recently took a looking glass to its racial
mix of representative players aged 16 to 18, conducting a survey in
Sydney, Newcastle, Canberra, Central Coast, Illawarra and Gold
Coast. Of the 840 players surveyed, 656, or 78 per cent, listed
their country of birth as Australia and many indigenous players
ticked the heritage box listing themselves as "Australian", rather
than "Aboriginal".

While many would see this as demonstrating sport's ability to
assimilate, Hall and Francis point out it undercounts the real
representation of indigenous players. "Our Aboriginal figures are
down because kids you know are Aboriginal ticked the box for
Australia," Hall said. "It's the same with the Polynesian boxes
[Fiji, Tonga, New Zealand, Samoa] as well. Both the Aboriginal kids
and the Polynesian kids tick the Australian box."

Hall, now based at the Western Sydney Academy at Penrith, which
embraces the league districts of Western Suburbs, Parramatta and
Penrith, says there is no evidence of indigenous footballers
migrating to AFL.

The western Sydney heartland of the code has become the
battleground of a push by the AFL to recruit talent for its
proposed 18th team in 2012.

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